FIGHT!

Student brawls posted online stir safety concerns

STORY SUMMARY »

Some public schools are enlisting the help of neighborhoods, parents, police and even mixed- martial arts fighters to deal with students who intentionally hold brawls off-campus, record the fights on the Internet and even get paid to participate with support from adults.

The scuffles, many available on YouTube.com, are happening in living rooms, parks and streets.

"They don't even consider it fighting, they consider it grappling. They think it's for fun. It's not a disagreement, it's just a match," Castle High School Principal Meredith Maeda said in a presentation before the Kahaluu Neighbor- hood Board. "One of the fights that we had ... (included) a community member telling the kids to get out of the way so that adults could have a better view."

One parent says she pulled her 13-year-old daughter from King Intermediate after she was beaten last month allegedly by a girl who later attacked another victim, this time on video and with her mother standing on the side for support.

Schools Deputy Superintendent Clayton Fujie said "not every complex has had this influx" of fights. He said the Board of Education has approved new rules to allow educators to crack down on fights and address cyberbullying -- the use of cell phones, computers and other technology as harassment tools.

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With their fists up, two shirtless teenagers jab and kick as a crowd on the sidewalk cheers on. After 16 seconds and a flurry of punches, one spectator says, "Oh, he is bleeding already."

Combating Cyberbullying Here are a few ways to combat cyberbullying, according to the National Crime Prevention Council: » Keep computers in a highly trafficked room where online activities are hard for teens to hide. » Teach teens not to respond to cyberbullies. Show them how to block the bully's messages or to delete messages without reading them. » Tell teens that they should never try to seek revenge on a bully or cyberbully. » Share examples of inappropriate incidents that can happen online, which teens may view as harmless or normal. » Help teen victims keep a record of bullying incidents. This will be helpful if the actions escalate and police needs to intervene.

With their fists up, two shirtless teenagers jab and kick as a crowd on the sidewalk cheers on. After 16 seconds and a flurry of punches, one spectator says, "Oh, he is bleeding already."

The fight, broadcast in grainy video on YouTube.com and titled "Waipahu," goes on for 2 1/2 minutes before a woman intervenes. But the scuffle moves to a "second round" with the boys at the parking lot of a Chevron gas station.

The posting is among a seemingly endless archive of online footage -- allegedly of Hawaii students fighting -- that is alarming school administrators. While kids have uploaded fights on the Internet for some years now, school officials say there is renewed concern about brawls intentionally held off campus, participants getting paid and even parents joining in on the sidelines.

For Donna Lindsey, a rash of 14 fights outside King Intermediate in the 3 1/2 months she has been principal led her to seek help from community groups and the police.

"Off campus, they are fighting until they are tired," she said. "And we have parents who are more condoning than stopping it."

Bridgette Ardo said she pulled her 13-year-old daughter from King Intermediate after she was beaten on April 24 by a girl who attacked another student later in the day. Ardo said the second fight was videotaped and shows the girl's mother giving her tips.

"It is just absurd to have the mother encouraging the fight, telling her daughter to lick her and kick her," she said. "There's an adult bystander who stops, tries to intervene when the student's mom grabs her, pushes her away and tells her, 'Stay out of it. Stay out of it.'"

School administrators, however, say their hands are tied when students clash off campus.

King Intermediate stopped suspending children who fought outside school after the state Attorney General's Office warned they would need to start regularly monitoring those areas to penalize students, Lindsey said.

So Lindsey, Castle High Principal Meredith Maeda and Lea Albert, the superintendent for the Castle-Kahuku complex, began asking Windward residents, businesses and church leaders to combat the problem.

"There are boundaries and limits to our authority," Albert said last week before meeting with the Kahaluu Neighborhood Board. "We are just trying to do everything we can proactively to keep our children safe and our communities peaceful."

Nationally, about 160,000 students miss school daily because they fear being bullied, and some states, including Kentucky and Maryland, have passed laws specifically addressing cyberbullying -- the use of cell phones, computers and other technology as harassment tools -- according to the National Crime Prevention Council, a nonprofit advocating for safe communities.

"It's a difficult position for schools and we certainly understand the difficulties that they have in a lot of these instances when things do occur off campus, off school property," said the council's Michelle Boykins.

Hawaii lawmakers killed a cyberbullying measure last year because the Board of Education was already updating a student misconduct code, known as Chapter 19, to broaden schools' enforcement powers. A chief clause would allow schools to discipline students who use home computers to bully classmates as long as officials prove the incident disrupted campus operations.

In February, three Niu Valley Middle School students and a Kaiser High student shown on YouTube assaulting a girl from Sacred Hearts Academy were allegedly retaliating because the girl had repeatedly bullied one of them online, according to Niu Valley Principal Justin Mew, who said a police investigation is ongoing.

Mew, who helped draft the new cyberbullying guidelines, said his students received counseling and a letter was sent to all parents highlighting the school's zero tolerance policy for fighting.

Honolulu Police Department spokesman Maj. Frank Fujii said he was not aware of other probes triggered by schoolchildren posting Web videos. He urged bystanders who witness fights to immediately call authorities.

"We are identifying that this has been something that we need to really be concerned about. We are seeing it more and more," he said, but statistics were not available. "People will videotape this, play it, but nobody, you know, very rarely do we have people come forward to make reports about it."

Online clips range from students giggling as they wrestle in a living room to bloody brawls on streets and in parks.

Educators say parents are their best ally in educating children involved in "staged fights" that resemble popular martial arts competitions on TV, with students sometimes wearing gloves and peers posing as referees.

"It all begins at home. Everybody agrees that attitudes have to begin at home," said Ted Kanemori who, as member of a citizens patrol group at Alii Shores, dons a bright yellow shirt and keeps an eye on students after the bell rings at nearby King Intermediate.

An area resident since 1971, Kanemori said the watch group was launched about four years ago when off-campus fights intensified and students began threatening neighbors who told them to quit.

"The neighbors started staying in their homes and just calling 911," he said.

Besides the community outreach, Albert plans on having students produce public service announcements about the fights and bring in professional fighters to explain the dangers of copying the sport without training, medical supervision, or knowledge of rules.

At Castle High, a student suffered a concussion in a fight but only got treated two days later when the parent discovered the injury and alerted the school, Maeda said.

"What I see on MySpace, there are 2 on 1, 3 on 1, there are no rules," he said, noting fights erupt mainly because of arguments.

On the Big Island, Mary Correa, superintendent for the Kau-Keaau-Pahoa complex, had B.J. Penn, a champion local fighter, speak to students, said Deputy Schools Superintendent Clayton Fujie.

He said "not every complex has had this influx" in fights.

School board member John Penebacker said he hopes the revised student code, which still needs to go before public hearings and be signed by Gov. Linda Lingle, will help schools crack down on conflicts.

The document would make any student who supports a fight, either by instigating or forming a circle around it, guilty of participating, and allow for penalties against a student to "be carried over to the next school year" even if the offense happened in the last days of the spring semester.

"The problem has persisted at Castle, King Intermediate and some other Windward schools," said Penebacker, who introduced Chapter 19 in the early '80s and was re-elected in 2006 on a platform of school safety.

"Whenever there is a problem, obviously we are not doing enough," he added. "But we need to recognize the shortcomings and ensure that we reinforce the programs in place so that we can teach these kids that there are better ways to do conflict resolution other than fighting."

As for Ardo, she said her daughter, who is being homeschooled at state expense, won't return to campus until King Intermediate convinces her it would be OK.

"I don't feel safe dropping my daughter off at King school, driving away and wondering and thinking, 'Am I going to get a phone call?'," Ardo said. "It's very worrisome."